Truth Is the Coin

Below is a letter written by activists Bruce Fein and Ralph Nader to the White House national security advisor.

September 12, 2024

Mr. John Kirby
White House National Security Communications Advisor
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Re: Serial lies and distortions about the Israeli government and Gaza horrors; the United States has become an Israeli government satellite.

Dear Mr. Kirby:

Truth is the coin of our democratic realm.

By that metric, you habitually hand out to the American people known fake currency in dismissing or slighting the post-October 7, 2023, horrifying, lawless, industrial-scale destruction and exterminations of hundreds of thousands of defenseless Palestinians in Gaza—women, men, and children—even babies in incubators.

President Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, referring to the carnage in Gaza said: “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” as reported in The New York Times (April 3, 2024). An impressive number of Israeli human rights groups (17), includiog B’Tselem, have denounced Israeli human rights violations.

Additionally, the unconditional United States arms transfers to the Israeli government violate six domestic laws: the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the Humanitarian Aid Corridors Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Leahy Amendments, and the Genocide Implementation Act. How are these violations consistent with the President’s constitutional obligation that the laws be faithfully executed, not circumvented?

Your press briefing on July 25, 2024, was illustrative. Press briefings are commonly replete with jumbled grammar or syntax that defy quotation. Thus, we have more coherently summarized your press briefing views as follows:

1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not guilty of war crimes, notwithstanding the accusations of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the conclusions of the International Court of Justice that the Prime Minister is presiding over a government guilty of “plausible genocide” in Gaza, in addition to documented torture of PaJestinian detainees, and apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza
2. The IDF’s thwarting the delivery of humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of starving civilians has been “accidental,” nol purposeful. like the killings of seven World Central Kitchen workers by munitions fired from Israeli armed drones that ripped through their vehicles. In contrast, precision targeting is the order of the day in the IDF in striking Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut or Tehran.
3. The shocking civilian deaths in Gaza are deplorable but no one is to blame in the eyes of the law—certainly not Israel—implausibly implying that perhaps unnamed unicorns were responsible.

Our characterizations of your falsehoods are shared by others.

All the observing world can see and detect your knowing lies that echo those by Netanyahu. You have ignored the grim words on April 11, 2024, of Biden Humanitarian Envoy David Satterfield: “[T]here is an imminent risk of famine for the majority. if not all, the 2.2 million population of Gaza. This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, its experts assess and believe is real;” Starvation is a weapon of genocide.

But you have plenty of company: President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Like you, all repeat the talking points of an Israeli government headed by a suspected war criminal according to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and currently undergoing criminal prosecution in an Israeli court for political corruption and abuse of power.

Is it any wonder that as long ago as October 3, 2001, according to Israel radio Kol Yisrael, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned Prime Minister Arik Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and “turn the US against us?” An infuriated Sharon shouted. “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it”

The Biden administration collectively has become Israel’s Charlie McCarthy, the dummy partner of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, to wit:

“We’ve had ongoing assessments of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law. We have not found them to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

“This [South African genocide] submission is meritless. counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever … We have not at this point seen acts that constitute genocide.”

“The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has falsely accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes, and in so doing has equated Israel with Hamas.”

“Hamas is responsible for ending a temporary cease-fire in Gaza.”

“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests and even providing financial support to [American] protesters.”

Have you and your colleagues forgotten President George Washington’s timeless Farewell Address:

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.”

Your whitewash of Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the West Bank is worthy of United States Ambassador Joseph Davies’ worshipful account of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Mission to Moscow. But the Ambassador had a partial excuse. We needed Russian soldiers on the Eastern front to fight and to die in the millions to diminish United States casualties in defeating Nari Germany. In contrast, we do not need Israel to defend ourselves. No country poses a threat to invade the United States. And Israel uniquely among its neighbors possesses nuclear weapons. Our submissive relationship toward Israel is the classic case of the tail wagging the dog. The White House and Congress have become satellites of the Israeli government—-a supreme humiliation for the United States that proclaims to the world we are “the indispensable nation.”

We urge you to recant your knowing falsehoods and resign. While the analogy is imperfect, White House Press Secretary Jerald Ter Horst resigned over President Gerald Ford’s indefensible pardon of former President Richard Nixon.

Go and do likewise.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein, Esq.

Ralph Nader, Esq.